Alex, I’ll take “Pandemic-Time Headlines” for $2,000, please.
Pix Patisserie, the East Burnside restaurant known for its fanciful desserts and award-winning Champagne selection, debuted a new business model late last month.
That model? A Shoppertron 431 self-serve vending machine.
The refrigerated vending machine sits just outside Pix’s East Burnside Street headquarters, dispensing rotating trays of orange vanilla crème brûlée, squid in black ink, “Moscow Mitch” toilet paper, “Rick Astley for President" pins, macarons and eggs under a disco ball and flashing lights.
And through Sunday, the machine is filled with boxes of pork and chive dumplings from Lucky Strike, a cult-favorite Sichuan restaurant which closed its Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard dining room in 2015.
On my visit Friday morning, I walked up the front ramp to find the disco ball twirling and the Pet Shop Boys’ 1984 hit single “West End Girls” playing from a speaker somewhere overhead. There was no one else around, so I took my time reading the instructions on the machine, ran my card through the reader, opened one of the sliding doors and grabbed a box of chilled dumplings to reheat at home. For $8, the box held six delicate dumplings and a side of fragrant chile oil for dipping.
Just then, I sensed someone coming up the ramp behind me and turned around to find Lucky Strike owner Rita Jia You wearing a white face mask and carrying a cardboard box filled with more dumplings boxes to reload the machine. She told me she has stayed busy since Lucky Strike’s closure taking care of her two kids and hosting the occasional pop-up. As we were talking, Pix owner Cheryl Wakerhauser opened the dessert bar door, grabbed the cardboard box and said she’s had the Pix-O-Matic idea in her head for six years.
“When the whole shutdown came, it just made perfect sense,” Wakerhauser said. “Because No. 1, you don’t have to have any interaction with a human being, and No. 2, it’s open 24 hours a day, which means I can go home, I don’t have to be here 80 hours a week like I was, people can use it whenever they want, and I just have to stock it up.”
Though Lucky Strike’s dumplings will last only through Sunday, future pop-ups will include a selection of imported cheese from Cowbell from June 11-18 for anyone wanting to make a 1 a.m. raclette run, plus an Orange Cap Ginger Beer takeover from Tobias Hogan, formerly of EaT Oyster Bar, from July 1-6.
Check out Pix’s new Pix-O-Matic vending machine 24 hours a day at 2225 E. Burnside St. Lucky Strike’s dumpling pop-up will run through Sunday while supplies last.
-- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell
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